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Gamification is the latest buzzword on the street. It ranked a keynote panel session at Enterprise 2.0 in November and it was one of two main topics discussed at the recent Institute for Social, Search and Mobile Marketing (ISSMM) K1 Executive Roundtable. Marketing and customer service executives came to the ISSMM event to learn more about mobile marketing and gamification. At the event I moderated several sessions, including a fireside chat with CEO Kris Duggan of Badgeville. Many people link gamification with business to consumer (B2C) mobile apps but gamification has far broader implications than mobile B2C check-ins for stores and restaurants. In our chat, I asked Mr. Duggan to define what gamification means and how it can benefit businesses in both a business to employee and business to customer context.

My premise is that the term gamification doesn't accurately depict the benefits a business can achieve. It’s a term that you need to explain, which normally stalls adoption. While executives may be interested in how they can use gamification for B2C engagement, most executives aren’t thrilled at the prospect of creating Farmville for the enterprise. In fact, there is a great debate about what gamification means and if it benefits the business. The truth is that game mechanics have been used in business for some time. For example, companies currently use leader boards for sales and loyalty programs for customers. We are already using other terms that offer some of the same benefits such as engagement strategies, game mechanics, advocacy, and rewards.

Why do we care about gamification? It’s becoming harder for a business to retain its customers and engage its employees. It’s believed that gamification can be used to motivate engagement and certain behaviors for both your customers and employees. It’s about creating identity and reputation and recognizing a person's attention and loyalty.

It isn’t just about awarding badges and it isn't about games for the sake of creating a fun workplace. Mr. Duggan states true gamification offers deeper engagement such as real-time feedback loops when people do things, social experiences and creating layers of engagement inside the company. It isn’t just an enterprise version of Facebook. Badgeville describes the overall category as behavior lifecycle management (BLM). Duggan says it’s bigger than gamification because it incorporates all the ways we can measure and influence behavior. Badgeville describes it as encompassing trends such as game mechanics, big data, identity, analytics, reputation, social, community and collaboration. BLM is the process of measuring and influencing behavior to meet your business goals.

How do you take advantage of this trend? I recommend three tips for getting started. First, define what business goals could be enhanced by gamification and how you can use gamification to drive user behavior to meet these goals. Which goals should you start with? A company should select areas where it can measure outcomes (e.g. change in the number of employees that completed a certain training course, change in return visits, change in length of participation per visit). Second, a company should embed experiences directly into its Web site, mobile apps and its business applications. Employees and customers are being asked to use enough tools. Instead of creating a gamification island, a business should create experiences that live inside its existing processes such as collaboration, CRM tools and Web sites. Third, the experience should provide guidance and feedback to the user early and often. Gamification is about actively letting users know where they stand and guiding them to a desired behavior. Duggan gave examples of how Samsung used it to drive an increase in product reviews and how other companies used it to increase community participation.

The takeaway from my conversation is that gamification provides benefits to almost any firm but you need to focus on building the experience and adapting the experience over time to keep your constituents engaged. In short, I agree that gamification is important but we need a new term to get us over the bias against fun in the workplace.